Anthem Inc., one of the country’s biggest health insurers, has been hit by a major cyberattack that could affect millions of its customers and employees. As news of the large-scale hack broke late Feb. 4, it was already having a ripple effect on Capitol Hill, with a top lawmaker calling on Congress to pass information-sharing legislation in response.

Hackers stole personal information from current and former Anthem members, including Social Security numbers, street and email addresses, and income data, the insurer said a statement that described the hack as “very sophisticated.” The firm said it had seen no evidence that credit card or medical information was compromised.

The hackers penetrated an Anthem database housing the personal information of 80 million Anthem customers and employees, the Wall Street Journal reported.

In a statement, the FBI said it was investigating the Anthem hack and praised the company’s swift response.

Army CIO Lt. Gen. Robert Ferrell has released a set of ambitious IT modernization plans that seek to accelerate progress in key areas such as cybersecurity and cloud computing for the service’s more than 1.4 million network users.

The strategy includes bolstering the throughput of Army networks and delivering voice-over-IP technology, and it establishes a clear IT road map for the Army through the end of the decade. In unveiling the strategy at an AFCEA NOVA conference for defense IT executives on Feb. 4, Ferrell sought industry help on specific technological challenges, such as distributed cloud nodes and mobile solutions, and offered a timeline for vendors to follow.

Facing both shrinking research and development budgets and a need to adopt faster and more flexible ISR network technologies, such as software-defined networks (SDNs), the Army is now looking to its commercial partners for assistance in developing innovative solutions.

“We work closely with both internal — Army and [Department of Defense] — research facilities, as well as contractors from multiple fields supporting cyberspace,” said Lt. Col. Jackie Jones, a spokesman for the Advanced Concepts and Technology Directorate (ACTD) of Army Cyber Command in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Jones said the decision to work in closer collaboration with commercial partners is being made out of necessity. “While DoD research facilities may expand the number of technologies they develop and evaluate, they are not growing in capacity at the same rate as the civilian marketplace.”

Jones noted that by forming close ties with industry, academic and other external R&D organizations, the Army hopes to achieve and maintain a thorough understanding of all emerging ISR network technologies. “Currently, not all cyberspace capability requirements from commanders can be accomplished with existing technologies,” he said. “As operations being conducted in and through cyberspace become more integrated within military operations … research and development into new capabilities will be necessary for the Army to stay at the leading edge of technology with respect to our adversaries.”

The Defense Department’s network security “is not where it should be,” said Ashton Carter, the nominee for Defense secretary, during his Wednesday nomination hearing.

“We’re not anywhere near where we should be as a country,” Carter said before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. “Not only is our civilian infrastructure susceptible to cyberattack, but we have to be concerned about our military infrastructure.”

While the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Russian aggression in Ukraine dominated much of Carter’s hearing, the Pentagon pick also fielded questions on cybersecurity.

“A number of countries out there, including Russia, China, North Korea, probably many others, have very sophisticated means of attacking networks,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

Russia and China are both widely suspected of ongoing cyber campaigns to steal U.S. military secrets. Moscow is believed to be behind a 2008 cyberattack on the DOD. The government also recently blamed North Korea for a massive cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

WHAT: The Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Commerce is looking for a records management function for email.

WHY: Federal agencies are facing deadlines for managing email that qualifies as federal records in electronic format. By the end of 2016, the government will require email records to be stored electronically. Mindful of this requirement, the OIG at the Department of Commerce is looking for a compliance solution. Commerce OIG currently runs Outlook on an Exchange platform with a Blackberry mobile version, but it is planning a move to a FedRAMP approved cloud email by the end of September. The OIG wants a records management product that works with its cloud product, and is either cloud-hosted or stored locally at OIG. The office is looking for information on a system that can automate some aspects of records management, including capturing records on a schedule, grouping related email chains, retaining attachments, and holding content that is potentially needed in litigation.

Chances are, your company’s computers will come under attack sometime soon. The perpetrators may want to steal personal information. They may want trade secrets or intellectual property. They may simply want to annoy you.

Whatever their motives, by one estimate cybercrime is already costing the global economy more than $400 billion a year. After years of unproductive debate, the U.S. government finally looks ready to get serious. A big cybersecurity bill is likely to be introduced soon.

The question that springs to mind is whether that remedy might be more harmful than the disease. When it comes to digital security, the government — to put it mildly — can no longer take the country’s trust for granted. A systematic assault on cybercrime is necessary, but the policy must have safeguards and oversight built in from the start, not tacked on as afterthoughts.

A consortium of government, academic and private-sector partners has come together to build the National CyberGIS Facility at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the group aims to build a high-performance computing system optimized to handle geospatial data. The platform will be equipped with more than 7 petabytes of raw disk storage, solid-state drives, advanced graphics processing units, a high-speed network and dynamically provisioned cloud computing resources.

“There are critical problems that cyberGIS can assist in, from mapping water resources across local, regional and global scales to managing the preparation and response to disasters and emergencies,” said Shaowen Wang, the founding director of the CyberGIS Center. “But to date, no one has created the cyber infrastructure that is really needed to solve such problems.”